


A Slap in the Face

by Katydid_99



Series: If the Shoe Fits [2]
Category: Cinderella - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Disownment, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eleanor is a really good person, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Marcus is doubtful but willing, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, To Be Continued
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 14:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13078725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katydid_99/pseuds/Katydid_99
Summary: Some time after leaving her old life, Eleanor comes face to face with a ghost of her past in need.





	A Slap in the Face

Annabelle refused to take her hand from her cheek. She’s certain that the rings on Mother’s hand cut when she slapped her, and given her current location, there was nothing she could do about it except hold pressure on her stinging face. Besides, she wasn’t about to get blood all over her dress. Silk was expensive and Mother would be furious.

She looked back at the street before her. It was a poorer sector of town and rain was coming down in sheets, so only a few souls were mad enough or stubborn enough to be out and about. No one took notice of the girl in the overly-ornate dress huddled underneath the overhang of a foreclosed bakery. 

The chill in Annabelle’s bones suddenly deepens and she shivers at the air’s icy touch. Looking away from the street she pulls her knees closer and wonders what she’s supposed to do now. She has no real skills, doesn’t know anyone outside her family and their faraway circle of friends, and has never had a job in her ninteen years of life. In all the books she’s devoured, most young women with no where else to turn start in the prostitution business, but the idea of whoring herself makes her feel ill

“Ana? What are you doing here?”

She looks up and almost immediately regrets it. Clear skin richer than any caramel. Dark, gently-curled hair pulled into a tail with a peach ribbon. An absolutely beautiful face, who last she saw was being swept away by the prince himself, now dappled in concerned confusion.

Annabelle blinks dumbly as Eleanor kneels before her. Her gown is in a simple yet elegant cut and made of glowing yellow satin, a beam of sunshine in the dreary street. Mother would throw a fit if she knelt in this filthy street while wearing such an ensemble, but her escorts don’t seem to mind.  _ Escorts! _ There’s three of them, tall strapping men. One of them holds an umbrella over the princess as she kneels.

“What are you doing here?” the older girl prompts again.

Close to a million responses fly through the Annabelle’s mind. She could tell her everything, she could ignore her and hope she just leaves, she could spit at her and remind her that she is to be called by her full name  _ thankyouverymuch… _ in the end she rasies her chin a little higher and haughtily says, “I could ask you the same.”

“I went to pick up a hat in town,” Eleanor explains. “It started raining, so we were taking a shortcut back to the palace.” 

Glancing up, Annabelle did notice that one of the men had a hat box wrapped in cellophane to protect it from the downpour. “Don’t you have servants for that now?”

Eleanor shrugs. “I like going out.” She blinks and leans in a little closer. “Why are you holding your face like that?”

“Like what?” Annabelle inches back a little more.

“Are you hurt?” She starts to reach out and Annabelle bats her hand away.

“Don’t touch me!” Old habits that have been beat into her since she can remember are showing in full color.  _ Everyone is either born lucky or lucky to be born.  _ She and Eleanor were respectively the two sides of that philosophy. That’s what Mother said, and Mother was always right.

_ Right? _

Eleanor huffed in frustration. “Annabelle, tell me what’s wrong.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Cinderella!”

Then, quicker than a hummingbird, Eleanor lashed out and yanked Annabelle’s hand from her face. Eleanor gasped and slowly reached out and touched the wounded cheek. “Oh, Ana…” she whispered. “What happened?”

On her part, Annabelle was frozen in place. Something warm and wet slid down her face, and she was certain there was blood. So much money was spent on this dress and now she was ruining it. What was Mother going to say?

_ But Mother’s not here anymore,  _ a little voice in her head whispered.  _ Mother doesn’t care anymore. _ This epiphany was followed by the realization that her other cheek was warm and wet too.

She wasn’t just bleeding. She was crying. 

The girl dared to look her older stepsister in the eye. Eleanor’s face held no hint of the cruelty or smugness that she felt she deserved. Instead, she saw only worry. 

_ She cares. _

Annabelle blinked away more tears and took a deep breath. “Mo-” her voice cracked, “Mother disowned me.”

***

Despite being no stranger to luxury, Annabelle was mesmerised by her guest room at the palace.

Mother loved all things expensive. Home was filled by all means of glitz and glamour and most anything that was considered pretty. There was no room for anything other than perfection in Le Chateau Toulouse. Perfect rooms, perfect clothes, perfect daughters…

This room was also beautiful and expensive, but much more subdued. The carpet was soft and white, which complemented the gold leaf wallpaper nicely. There was a dresser and a bed and a vanity, all made of polished oak. There were three candelabras with lit the room in a soft, buttery glow. Annabelle also had an obsession with sparkly things, but she decided she liked this room much better than her house. It felt livable, like an actual home rather than a museum.

Eleanor had her escorted into the palace about six hours ago. In that time she had been set up in this beautiful room, her sodden and slightly-bloody clothes had been taken to be washed, and she’d been taken to what had to be the most amazing bathroom in her life for a hot soak. Now, she sat on the edge of the feather bed wrapped in a fluffy blue robe. She could hear a muffled argument from outside her door. One voice she faintly recognized as Eleanor’s, but the other she couldn’t place beyond being male and fairly young. She turned her head from the door and caught her reflection in the mirror on the vanity.

_ Bleck.  _ She hated looking at herself after washing. Without the dresses, jewels, and makeup she was hopelessly plain. Underneath the patch of gauze and medical tape, her face was a oval with proportional, but unremarkable features and her skin was pale, but not in the perfect porcelain way all the noble ladies in her books had. Her muddy hazel eyes stared back at her as she looked at her own thin lips and flat brown hair. More than anything else, she hated how everything just wasn’t  _ enough.  _ Her hair wasn’t shiny enough, her nose wasn’t small enough, her body wasn’t slim enough… it was especially that last one. Never skinny enough, never pretty enough, never good enough.

Annabelle was just thinking of going to find that beautiful bathroom again to purge when her door opened and the prince stepped inside, closing the door behind him. 

“Annabelle Toulouse?”

The girl gasped and jumped to her feet, curtsying. “Y-your Majesty.”

He sighed. “Sit down,” he said, which she responded to promptly.

Prince Marcus René de la Couronne. Standing right in front of her. He was dressed very simply: just a white shirt, blue trousers, and brown riding boots. The simple, classic look highlighted his natural attractiveness; the copper curls, the sea-colored eyes, the constellations of freckles decorating his elfish face. The feature that made him a national heartthrob . And she, she remembered painfully, was pitiful, barely dressed, and had tormented his fiancee her entire life.

He stood in front of her and looked her up and down. His expression was one of calculated calmness, like he was trying to hide his true feelings. “You’ve been disowned,” he said this as a statement, not a question, and it took her a second to answer.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Care to explain why?”

The moment it happened flickered in her mind. Being discovered in the linen closet, Mother’s screaming fit, Stepanie watching in horror but sound nothing, the slap that will likely follow her for the rest of her life… Annabelle bit her lip and shook her head. “It’s… personal, Your Majesty.”

The prince was quiet for a moment before stepping closer and peeling back the compress on her cheek. She winced as he looked at the wound. His eyes flickered with sympathy for a second before resolving back to passiveness. “You mother did this.” Another statement. She nodded. “You should know that I know everything that happened to Nori in that house.”

She nodded again. “I-I figured.”

“Your mother made her a servant and you tormented her.”

Annabelle closed her eyes. This couldn’t be real. She had to be having a nightmare. “Yes.”

“Will you explain that to me?”

_ How? _ Eleanor had been Cinderella since before she could remember. She grew up with the beautiful girl doing housework that was meant for far more than just one person. Cinderella was maid, chef, seamstress, launder, gardener, sablegirl, and verbal punching bag all in one. That was the way things were, and Mother kept it that way. Now, the honest to goodness  _ prince _ was staring down at her demanding to know “why”.

She swallowed thickly. “It…it’s just what was done.”

“‘It’s just what is done’?” he parroted, followed by a noise that was something between a scoff and a laugh. “A woman, who’s supposed to be a mother, forcing a six-year-old into slave labor is ‘what is done’? Treating her like an animal and teaching others to do the same is ‘what is done’? Starving, isolating, beating, giving her body and mind scars that  _ will never go away _ ? To anyone, let alone the kindest human being I have ever encountered? Tell me, does that sound like something that is ‘just done’ to you?”

“Scars?” Annabelle croaked. 

“ _ Lashing _ scars,” the man confirmed coldly. 

“ _ Lashing _ ?”

The prince stopped short and his eyes widened in realization. Annabelle released a shaking breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.  _ Mother lashed her?  _ Mother had hit them all from time to time, but they weren’t really  _ hits _ . Just little smacks to the arm or head if you screwed something up. It was just her way of trying to make them better because she loved them. Eleanor had always gotten smacked more than her or Stephanie, but  _ lashing _ ? What else had Mother been hiding from her? 

She felt like she was going to throw up as she slowly whispered, “I didn’t know.”

“If you did, would you have done anything to stop it?”

He may as well have slapped her a second time.

“No,” Annabelle looked down at her bare feet and clench the blanket in her fists. She was definitely going to throw up.

Above her, the prince released a long breath through his nose. “You’re despicable,” he murmured.

Her eyes squeezed shut. ‘I know.”

“You don’t deserve a stepsister like her.”

“I know.”

“I should make you leave and never return.”

“I know.”

The two were silent for a moment before she slid back to her feet. “I’ll be gone once my dress is out of the wash. Unless it hasn’t gone in yet, then I can leave now. I can wear it as is.” She dipped into a curtsy. “Thank you for your hospitality, You Majesty.” It’s then when the most unexpected thing of the day happened. More unexpected than Mother slapping her or being disowned or Eleanor finding her and taking her to the palace.

The prince put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back onto the bed. “Rest,” he ordered softly. “I’ll have someone bring you up some tea.” 

Annabelle was astonished. So astonished in fact that she didn’t even notice the prince leaving until the was already at the door. She whipped around wildly. “I thought you said you were going to-”

“I said that’s what I should do. However, it seems that Eleanor has, regrettably, had a positive influence on me.” He looked over his shoulder with a funny half-smile. “Perhaps she’ll do the same for you.”

And with that the prince vanished through the door and she was left alone. As his footsteps faded away Annabelle buried her face in her hands and began crying for the second time today. Whether it was because she got a second chance or because she didn’t deserve one, she couldn’t say.

**Author's Note:**

> I've always liked the idea of the "stepsister redemption", so here's my take on it. Why was Annabelle disowned? You'll have to wait for the next part!


End file.
